I must admit, I too was a little confused when our Live Designers told me Darius was overpowered.

Then we was one of the sleeper picks of the IEM World Championships, capped by M5's Darien going 10-1-5 on him versus CJFrost, arguably the best team in the world. Darien played him as I envisioned him:

A lane bully who frees up other lanes from jungle pressure by forcing action to himself;
With the best mid game team fight of any top laner -- he completely changes the risk/reward calculus for contesting any objective his team is after;
Who transitions into a late game tank buster -- Xin Zhao just got 125 Armor/MR from his ult? Here's 800 true damage to the face;
With an unparalleled capability to force fights with Apprehend and end them before they've even begun if he grabs and summarily executes a carry.

It's further proof that those guys know more than us. Put some faith in the Live balance team. They have forgotten more about LoL than you and I will ever know.

Yeah, what do you expect form the community. There a ton of bad players who play him because they feel like he's insta-win. He suffers from the ali/shen effect where people insta-lock him and surprisingly end up doing terrible.

As a hero he's like Riven. He has a binary design where he's forced to snowball and even then he isn't the most reliant top/jungle. His nerfs weren't necessary for higher level play or competitively but were made for to combat an emotional response. Riot nerfs not only for mechanical reason but to drive an emotional response. I say this his burst is weaker in a health stacking meta, he doesn't do good into 2v1, his damage caps, and he's forced to have 1 build (tank not the one that ppl cry about doing 2k damage which is false).

The problem with champions like Riven and now Darius is that they have a hard time to actually get back into the game if behind. Darius still has some tools to get back into the game but how useful is a 0/5/0 Darius or Riven? If they're combo isn't working out they're basically useless. Darius goals in team fights wasn't to burst down and end fights quicky if they did end quickly it wasn't due to darius. Darius excelled in prolong team fights where he survives long enough for his DPS to do significant amounts of damage. He was never the type of guy who can dive the adc and expect to live

The nerf probably didnt even hurt him that bad, but hes just less fun to play knowing there is no point trying to get kills with your ult when you can just use it as soon as you get 5 stacks.

This. Absolutely completely 100% this. He just doesn't feel as fun anymore because it destroyed a lot of incentive to try and get an ult reset since it will go on cooldown anyway. It's a bigger problem elsewhere than SR, but I refuse to buy a Darius skin now until they give him back his ult refresh. Totally wrecked the most fun part about Darius Most fun being that I know I'm using his ult right and getting rewarded for it, not just using it whenever because there's no point in not doing it.

(In specific, I'm talking Dominion, where smaller fights happen far enough apart that he's forced to either not use his ult most of the time or deal with it being on cooldown for half of the fights he engages)

Why not nerf him by making him require AD to do damage? Why not increase pull cooldown? Instead Riot hit the most signature part of Darius. It would be like nerfing Karthus ult to only hit visible enemies; he still works fine if your team can ward and such, but his feel is totally wrecked.

It was a stupid, lazy band-aid that was meant to patch out Darius' power because he didn't quite come out the way people had hoped (see: Morello's posts on possible options for a rework where Darius had like 10 max bleed stacks and etc etc). I don't even play Darius much, but these kinds of changes are the worst kinds possible from a philosophical design perspective.

I think your forgetting how incredibly frustrating it is to play against him, his counter play is mostly centered around champion select, and that is not a good sign when that is the best way to deal with him.

I think your forgetting how incredibly frustrating it is to play against him, his counter play is mostly centered around champion select, and that is not a good sign when that is the best way to deal with him.

The thing is, that can be solved by making him have to actually build damage and punishing him for misusing his kit interactions. They took the easy way out and hit him in the guts though.